


Happens Great, Happens Sweet

by meverri



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 03:25:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19040179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meverri/pseuds/meverri
Summary: A mysterious illness leaves the world nearly empty and John Egbert alone. Fate brings him friends.





	Happens Great, Happens Sweet

It’s blistering hot the day you bury your father.

He spent nearly a month fighting off the illness that claimed all your neighbors, your teachers, your classmates, and about 85% of the world’s population before he finally let out his final breath. When he first got sick, he told you to stay out of his room and away from him; he didn’t want you to get sick, too. You cooked up the dwindling cans of vegetables and soups in your kitchen and left them outside his door for every meal. You listened every night as the coughing got worse. When even that had faded, you waited almost a week before daring to open the door, fearing his corpse.

When you saw it, it wasn’t as bad as you’d thought it would be, but a month of illness had stretched his skin so tightly across his face that he almost looked like a different person. It was far, far too easy to lift him, to wrap him in his sweat- and vomit-soaked blankets, to bring him down to the old oak tree in your front yard and deposit him in the hole you’d dug the previous night.

What’s funny, you think, piling the soil back on top of him, is that you hadn’t ever been in your father’s room before he died. He was an intensely private man. He left almost nothing behind- his wallet, full of useless money; his hat, placed neatly on top of his dresser; a shakily-written note that read “Proud of you, son. I love you.” You aren’t sure where you’re going to put it.

The sun sets halfway through the burial. You know, logically, that you need to go inside, to lock the doors, to pretend there’s no one in this easily-looted neighborhood. You and your father already took everything from this street, and even that’s almost gone. Four years into the apocalypse, and the raiders have grown bold. You don’t even have your father’s pistol, with its three remaining bullets, at your hip. Your father would call it foolish.

When you finish, you give yourself only a minute to look up at the stars and rest. You’ve been mourning him since he first started coughing. Maybe you’ve been mourning him, the father you remember, since this whole thing began. It doesn’t feel like mourning, anymore. It feels like exhaustion.

* * *

You spend the summer trying desperately to coax whatever you can out of the ground. Your father’s old tomato plants wilt in the heat, and what they can produce is small and wrinkled and wrong-tasting. The herbs do better, but they mostly just keep your mouth busy while you hunger. You’re down to few enough cans that you try to eat only fresh food if you can- after all, the cans need to last through the winter.

You collect rainwater in buckets. You only bathe when you have to, and let your dark hair grow down into your eyes until you have to tie it back with a bit of cloth from an old pillowcase. Years ago, the pathetic excuse for facial hair that you manage to grow would have embarrassed you; now, you just let the patchy stubble turn into something resembling a beard, too exhausted even to shave with the metal razor your father left in the bathroom, in the top left drawer next to a can of shaving cream. 

When you aren’t in the garden, you read. You’re too scared to leave the house alone to try and raid, or, worse, to hunt. You imagine coming back to find the door kicked in and all the food gone, all the plates broken, your father’s grave desecrated, your grandmother’s urn overturned. No, you sit on the couch and read the business books your father left behind and suck on basil and thyme to try to quench the rumbling of your quickly-vanishing stomach. Each morning, you wake up a bit more exhausted, and each night, you fall asleep a bit more sunburnt and hungry.

The first cool wind of autumn sends a worse chill through you than you’ve ever felt. It’s enough to get you to grab the first jacket you find in the closet- you guess it’s your father’s, though you can’t imagine him wearing a bomber jacket- and out to the garden to collect what you can before it all dies.

It’s then that you hear the rolling of wheels, the strange old creaking of metal-on-metal. Your hand goes to your hip only to find itself empty- _foolish_ \- and you find yourself reaching for the only thing at hand, a hammer that you left by the fence months ago as you tried to repair it. You raise it as threateningly as you can, trying to conceal that you’re essentially skin and bones right now, as someone pulls around the corner with a little red wagon.

It’s the wagon that catches your attention first. It’s full to the brim with books- at least thirty, by your count, many of which are covered in pictures of leaves. The person pulling the wagon stops as your eyes meet- or, at least, you think they meet, since his are covered by dark, triangular sunglasses.

He’s at least a couple of inches taller than you, you think, but definitely thinner- or, at least, thinner than you used to be. He’s wearing a red hooded sweatshirt and denim jacket, the hood pulled over blonde hair that sweeps over his glasses and sticks out at odd angles. As he stops, he extends his hands to either side, palms out, and drops the handle of the wagon, which hits the ground with a startling _clang_.

“Sup,” he says, which is such a casual greeting that it would have been enough to make you laugh at its ridiculousness in another universe.

“Who are you,” you say, not quite a question. Your voice, normally squeaky, is rough with disuse, and you nearly flinch at the sound of it.

“Dave,” he says. “You?”

“John,” you reply, your hammer still raised.

“John,” he says, crossing his arms. “Okay, John. I’m looking for a place to stay.”

* * *

That first night, you make him take your bedroom. You insist. It echoes the way your dad used to talk to people, all polite and humble, but really you don’t want him to sneak off with all the food you keep in the kitchen. 

For his part, Dave shares a can of clam chowder- “I don’t like it,” he explains, “which is why I still have it”- and a cereal bar. You try not to eat like you’re starving, but when it’s over, you feel fuller than you have in weeks. You struggle to stay awake for the couple of hours or so after Dave goes up to bed, but finally you succumb to your exhaustion.

When you wake up, everything is where it should be, and Dave is sitting at your kitchen table with a book and another protein bar in front of him.  
After breakfast, Dave shows you the book- _Edible Plants of Washington State_ \- and nods at the page he has open.

“That’s bedstraw,” he explains. “I found some around the neighborhood. It’s edible. And,” he says, flipping to another page, “Dock. This one, you can even eat the seeds. That one, I found by a drainage pond about a mile away. I’m looking for more of these plants. If you help me, we can split them.”

You glance at him. “Where did you get all those books?”

He shrugs. “Libraries. Guess I got out of the house too late to loot all the stores, but not a lot of people thought to head to the library when shit hit the fan.”

You nod. “There’s houses all over the neighborhood,” you say. “You can stay across the street. Do you have a weapon?”

He sighs. “Well,” he says, reaching down for his backpack, “yeah, technically.”

He pulls the world’s shittiest, most broken sword out of his bag and slams it down on the table. It’s been snapped in half, but by the looks of it, that probably wasn’t much of a feat. Without meaning to, you grin.

“Wow,” you say. “And here I was, worried you might be some kind of threat or something.”

“I’ll have you know I could absolutely kick your ass,” he says. “I know kung fu. And like, karate and shit.”

“Where’d you learn that?” you ask. “Was it where you got the sword? Because if it was, I have some bad news for you.”

He snorts. “Listen. It’s a cool sword, and it’s awesome, and you can’t even argue with me because you’re wrong.”

“Sure,” you say, shrugging. “It’s not my tragic samurai funeral.”

“Then shut up.”

You roll your eyes.

* * *

As it turns out, all the neighbors’ houses are full of rats, so you let Dave stay in your room. You spend the first week on the couch, your father’s pistol by your side, but Dave doesn’t try anything weird and he even manages to show you where you should have planted the tomatoes.

“Next year,” he says, shrugging.

It’s scary how quickly you adjust to him. You gain back the weight you lost and, by going out into the woods with him and chopping down trees for firewood, manage to build some muscle. You shave again for the first time in months, nearly slicing yourself on your father’s razor, still as sharp as it ever was. You and Dave forage for roots and set traps and cook up a squirrel and bedstraw stew that leaves you feeling bubbly and full and happy. You grin a lot more. One day, Dave grins back.

The snow begins to fall, and you migrate into your father’s bedroom with the winter bedding you put away last spring. It’s hard at first, being in there, but you swallow down the grief and make yourself sleep every night. After a couple of weeks, it gets easier.

Sometimes, you hear Dave walking around at night. The first time, you’re tempted to confront him and make sure he’s not stealing, but by the fourth time, you figure he’s just a light sleeper.

One night, you hear him scream.

You’re up in seconds, your hand scrabbling at the dresser for your pistol, and then you’re down the hall and in his room and flipping the light on, pointing the gun wildly, until-

“John,” Dave gasps, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. “I’m okay. I’m fine. It was just a dream.”

You let your arm fall and wait for your heart to slow down to a healthy human rate. Dave slumps back in bed and wipes the hair out of his eyes. 

“Sorry,” you say.

“It’s fine,” he says, glancing your way. Without the stupid huge triangular shades, you can see the freckles dusting the tops of his cheeks, the way they arch over his nose, the way he squints at the light.

His eyes are red. Crimson like blood. He looks away when he notices you noticing, and you feel the blood rush into your cheeks.

“Okay,” you say. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Good night.”

You turn out the light.

* * *

You wake up to the smell of cooking meat one morning. Bacon. You haven’t smelled bacon in years.

You’re out of bed in an instant, shoving your glasses onto your face and pulling on a sweatshirt to cover your bare chest. Downstairs, Dave is frying bacon over the fire, his hair sticking up on one side. You have the sudden, horrible urge to give him a hug.

As soon as he sees you, he gifts you with a rare Dave smile. You smile back.

“Where’d you get bacon?” you ask. “And how did you keep it cold?”

He shrugs. “I traded for it in town before I got here. It’s been in the basement. Seemed okay when I brought it upstairs.”

“Must have been a fortune.”

“Yeah. Worth it, though.”

You glance at him. He’s got a weird expression, one you can’t quite figure out. He does that a lot. You do what you always do- you poke him in the side until he squirms away from you.

“Quit that. I’m gonna burn the bacon.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking. You’re doing that face.”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing, John.” You poke him again, and he jumps. “Jesus, dude!”

“Just tell me!” 

“Fine, Christ, just don’t impale my ribcage, huh?”

“Daaaaaaave!”

He sighs and glances at you. “It’s my birthday, okay, asshole?”

Before he can stop you, you pounce on him with a huge hug. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you say anything? Happy birthday, you prick!”

He shoves at you, laughing. “Augh, Jesus, Egbert, I don’t need you crushing me before we even get to eat. That shit cost a bag of Doritos, don’t you dare let it burn.”

You laugh, but you let him go just in time for him to get the bacon on a plate. You both dig into it immediately, burning your fingers and your tongues but it’s so, so worth it, and after you lay down on the couch and Dave sits with your legs in his lap and reads to you from one of the books he got at your local high school library when you went and raided it a month ago. Snow falls gently outside while Dave’s low, Texan twang surrounds you. You fall asleep with his hand on your knee.  
Later, you ask how he knew the date. He shows the inside cover of _Edible Plants_ , which is covered in a list of dates starting on June 8th, 2013. 

“I keep track on the books that go with wherever I am,” he explains. “The first one starts with the south, back in 2011.”

“That was when you left home?” you ask.

He nods.

“Why?”

“Why do I keep track of the date, or why did I leave?”

“Both, I guess.”

He sighs. “Well. The date is because I figure someday, someone’s going to figure this out and end it. I guess I want to know what day it is when that happens.” He pauses. “I left because there was no one left to stay in Texas for.”

You nod. There’s a moment’s silence before you manage to say, “My dad died back in June. Probably a couple of weeks after you got to Washington.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave manages.

“I’m sorry you had to leave home,” you say, “but I’m glad you ended up here.”

Dave gives you a sad smile and returns to reading.

* * *

In the spring, you plant things in the ground. Dave’s sort of incompetent when it comes to gardening, but he knows what you can eat and where to find it, so you’ve got enough seeds saved from last summer to start a real operation in your backyard. It extends into the neighbor’s yard a bit, too, and you feel bad for a second until you remember that land ownership isn’t really a thing anymore and go help Dave figure out how not to drown the tomato plants.

They’re sprouting the day you and Dave return home from a hunt, rabbits in hand, to find two girls wandering around the street.

As soon as you get close enough for them to hear you, the one with the long dark hair whips around and points a rifle straight at your chest. You lift your hands above your head, and you watch Dave start to do the same at your side until he freezes and says “Rose?”

The other girl, with short blonde hair and deep purple eyes, gives the two of you a look before she smiles at her friend. “Jade,” she says, “it’s okay. This is my brother, Dave. I presume,” she says, looking at you, “that you’re friends?”

You glance at Dave. He’s gone paler than usual, but he doesn’t look scared, so you let your arms drop to your sides but keep your eyes on the two girls- Jade and Rose, you guess.

“How did you find me?” Dave asks, his voice shaky.

“I didn’t,” Rose answers. “It seems providence has provided for us. I’d assumed you were dead.”

“Me too,” Dave says. Then he grins. “Guess Lalondes really are invincible.”

“Yes, we do like to think so,” Rose says. “This is Jade Harley. We met back in New York, at the start of all of this.”

“They brought me in to do research with her mom,” Jade explains. “And you are?”

“I’m John,” you explain. “John Egbert. And this is Dave Strider. Are… uh, are you guys hungry?”

You end up cooking a pretty amazing rabbit stew while Rose explains that she and Dave are half-siblings, and that they ended up meeting by chance online and only figured out they were related when Rose did a family tree project for school. She explains that she left New York after her mother got sick.

“They’d had us all quarantined while we did our research, but it wasn’t enough. Mom’s still alive, though, as far as I know. The treatments they’re testing have been effective so far, but it’s been difficult to produce and distribute, what with the general loss in infrastructure.”

Jade explains that she was raised on some island in the Pacific, but that she managed to finish an entire bachelor’s degree online by the age of thirteen. When the illness struck, she contacted top epidemiologists and offered the island as a safe place to perform research. When it became too difficult to transport everyone else, she decided to go to New York.

“Weren’t you afraid of getting sick?” you ask.

Jade shrugs. “I wanted to help. And Rose and I had talked a few times, and I felt bad that she was the only kid there. Plus, I was getting some wonky seismic readings from the volcano, and I didn’t want to be on the island if it erupted. I wasn’t sure if I’d get another opportunity to leave.”

“Originally, I wanted to travel south,” Rose explains. “I thought perhaps I could get to you. When I found your apartment, though…”

She trails off, and you glance at Dave long enough to notice that he’s incredibly uncomfortable. You press your knee up against his and give Jade a big grin.

“So how do you like the states?”

Jade launches into a big rant about seeing the nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island, and you feel Dave relax next to you. He doesn’t really relax, though, until you’ve changed out the sheets in your old room for the girls and Dave, for the first time, joins you in your dad’s old room. He offers to take the floor, but you just roll your eyes at him and wait until he climbs into bed next to you.

He’s quiet for a while before he finally says your name. You turn to face him, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes and brushing gently against his freckles. His eyelashes are so pale they almost glow with it.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

You give him a smile. “Anytime, ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”

He snorts. “You’re such a fucking dork, Egbert.”

You smile and boop his nose. “Yep! Good night, loser.”

“Good night, dork.”

* * *

On April 13th, 2014, you wake up to Dave Strider’s hand on your arm.

The remnants of your nightmare fade as you concentrate on breathing in, then out, then back in again, and Dave doesn’t move his hand until you lay back down, exhaling sharply.

“Nightmare?” he asks, and you nod.

“It’s my birthday today,” you explain. Ever since Dave's, you've kept count.

Dave frowns. “April 13th?”

You nod.

“Oh,” he says, smoothing a piece of your sweaty hair away from your face. “I’m sorry, John.”

Because the thing is, on your birthday, five years ago, your father returned from the grocery store with the vanilla he needed to make your cake, but also with seventeen cans of soup, thirty cans of peas, eight cans of creamed corn, a can of tomato paste, and a half pound of ginger. He pulled up the news while you two ate your dinner, and you watched as the news anchor calmly explained that a virus had appeared, virtually out of nowhere, and killed six thousand people within a night, infecting hundreds of thousands within a week. 

“The federal government has ordered a mandatory quarantine,” the anchor explained. “Excepting calls for emergency vehicles, everyone is ordered to remain indoors.” She gave a number to call to order any necessary medications, then continued on with the rest of the news.

“I’m sorry,” Dave says again, but it’s more of a whisper this time. You nod, and then, because you can’t stand the idea of Dave watching you cry, you bury your face in his shoulder.

He holds you for hours until you fall back asleep.

* * *

The summer is quiet and peaceful. You grow asparagus and tomatoes and pull dandelions from around the neighborhood. Every once in a while, you go into town to find people to trade with. Dave sets traps and you cook what he brings home. Jade likes to hunt, and soon she joins you and Dave on your expeditions.  
With four of you, there’s always someone left to guard the house. With four, you never worry about someone having your back. You feel safe for the first time in five years.

It’s a beautiful, warm summer. The four of you gather in the backyard to watch a storm roll in, then rush back inside before it hits. The pouring rain sounds like drums on the roof. Rose reads aloud to the rest of you from a story she’s written, except then Jade insists on playing all of the boy parts, and then Dave wants to play the little girl who’s in approximately one chapter (but whom he insists on inserting into every conversation in the story) and then you end up on sound effects and suddenly you’re all putting on the weirdest wizard play you’ve ever seen and giggling like idiots. On hot days, you and Jade spend all day tending to growing things. Jade plants pumpkins and assures you that, when they grow, they’ll be delicious in a pie. You tell her you don’t have pie ingredients, and she shrugs.

“Still delicious,” she says, the same smudge of dirt on her nose that’s been there for a week.

Sometimes, when it really pours, the four of you shower outside. It turns out that Jade has absolutely no shame, and soon the four of you are weirdly comfortable with stripping down and washing yourselves and your clothes out in a rainstorm. This only gets better when Jade finds a little stream a few miles away, in a part of the woods that you and Dave never quite reached, and the four of you go swimming on a particularly hot day. You keep your eyes firmly trained on everyone’s faces and TOTALLY DO NOT stare at the expanse of Dave’s chest, at his belly button, at his slightly-too-dark binder, at the way he shakes when he laughs. You do not do these things, because Dave is your friend and honestly, you don’t even have time to think about that kind of stuff when you’re having so much fun with your friends.  
One night, after Jade has cut your hair somewhat competently and you don’t have to tie it back to sleep comfortably anymore, you find your hand slipping into Dave’s while you teeter on the edge of sleep.

When you wake up, his hand is still entwined in yours.

* * *

“My brother and I lived together,” Dave tells you one night, the darkness surrounding every word until it’s gentler than it would have been.

“He took care of me after our mom died. I don’t remember her. But he did his best. Kept me in school and everything. Taught me how to fight. Taught me how to play video games and how to swordfight and shit. I mean, he was an asshole about a lot of stuff- he kept these fucking puppets everywhere, and he knew they freaked me out, especially the one, and he threw me down the fucking stairs a bunch of times when we fought. Like, apartment building stairs. Like it would take a couple floors for me to stop falling, that kind of stairs. And I don’t- fuck, I don’t even know how to feel about all that. It’s been so long. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, but also, like, I had to get food. I had to figure out how to be an adult.

He died when I was fifteen. We both got sick- we were both coughing. We had watched the neighbors go, and we knew the more time had passed since it started, the longer it was taking to kill people. It had taken one neighbor three weeks. We didn’t want that. So.”

Dave’s voice breaks, and you turn and wrap an arm around him. He squeezes your forearm and takes a deep breath.

“So we decided to OD on his old sleeping pills. We split them almost fifty-fifty, but he was bigger so he got more. We figured it would be better just to go to sleep. Better not to feel it.”

He’s crying, now, so you pull him closer and let him rest his forehead against yours, his eyes squeezed shut against the world.

“I panicked. As soon as I took them, I ran to the bathroom and made myself throw up. But it took a while, because I was panicking, so I still passed out. I woke up the next day, and Bro-”

He gasps, there, and then you’re shaking your head and pressing your lips, gently, to his forehead.

“Dave,” you say. “Dave. It’s not your fault. It’s not.”

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck. Fuck. It wasn't even the virus. It was just some stupid cold. I ended up fine. He would have lived. I hate- I don’t-”

You keep your arms tightly wrapped around him. “It’s okay, Dave. I mean, no, okay, it’s not okay, but it’s done. And you’re here with me, and Rose, and Jade, and fuck, Dave, you’re safe. You’re safe with us. It’s over now.”

You don’t fall asleep until Dave does, around the break of dawn, with the grayish light of morning filtering through your dad’s curtains, and you think you know something about grief but also, with the light illuminating Dave’s red, swollen face, worn out from crying, you think you know a lot about love.

* * *

When snow falls in late October, you and Dave grab your fishing poles and head towards the stream.

It’s a cold day. You both head out, you in your bomber jacket that falls a little too far past your wrists and Dave in his sweatshirt and jacket that are never quite warm enough, and march through the freshly-fallen snow toward the stream.

It’s a good day for fishing. The clouds keep the air cool, and the fish are nearly jumping out of the water. You dump your impressive haul into your bucket as the wind picks up in the early afternoon. The first flakes start to fall as you begin the trek back.

What started as a beautiful morning quickly goes dark. The wind pushes against you, tearing at the scarf you wound around Dave’s neck to keep him from freezing to death this morning. Dave grabs at your arm as the snow whips nearly sideways, making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of you. Within minutes, you are hopelessly lost.

“Just keep moving,” you yell. “We don’t want to get hypothermia.”

Dave just nods next to you, his grip on your arm iron-tight. 

You don’t make it much farther. The snow builds around your feet, concealing the roots and trees, and it only takes a few minutes before your foot catches in a root and twists as you fall.

Beyond the tree there’s a slope downward. You feel something pop as you roll downward, a spark of pain shooting up your thigh. The fall feels endless, but it’s likely only seconds before you come to a stop in the most frigid water you’ve ever felt.

You gasp, accidentally inhaling a mouthful of water. It isn’t deep- you push yourself into a sitting position and cough, trying to shake the water from your lungs. Dave catches up to you a second later and pulls you from the water, his arms wrapping around you as he pulls you upward.

You’re coughing, so you don’t get the chance to protest before he pulls you to your feet. The moment your right leg hits the ground, you gasp and nearly fall over again. Dave manages to catch you at the last moment, holding you up as you stars dance in your eyes from the pain.

“Shit,” he says. “Is it broken?”

You nod against his jacket. “I think so,” you manage weakly.

“Fuck,” he says. “Okay. We need to get inside somewhere.”

You laugh. “Where? We’re in the middle of nowhere.” The laughs bubble out of you and feel more like fear than amusement. “We’re a mile from home, at least, and we don’t know how to get there, and now I can’t walk, and-”

“John,” he says, his voice low and serious. “We’re going to find shelter. We’re going to get you warm and splint your leg. It’s going to be okay.”

You can’t even articulate how unlikely that seems, so instead, you let Dave pull you flush against his side and wrap your arm over his shoulders as he hooks his under your arms. You manage a tentative step with him holding most of your weight, and even though it hurts, it’s nothing compared to the fire of standing on your own, so you just keep going.

It’s slower going than before, though, and the wind and snow show no signs of stopping. You stay by the water, unable to climb up the embankment in your condition, and shiver as ice crystals form in your damp hair. You shiver harder as the minutes drag on, until almost an hour has passed and you’re so bone-cold that you don’t even feel your leg anymore.

“Dave,” you say, trying to get his attention, but all that comes out is the click of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. You try again, but this time it’s just a low moan, and Dave glances at you, concern across his features.

There’s something silly about his face. You grin at him, puzzled, until it hits you- his shades are gone.

You try to tell him this, but he shakes his head. He stops, tells you to put your hands on his shoulders underneath his jacket. You do, and the warmth in his shoulders almost makes you gasp out loud. Maybe it does. He pulls his jacket off and wraps it around you, pulling each arm through the sleeves for you like you’re a kid, then wraps his scarf around your head like the world’s shittiest turban.

“That’s all I have,” he says, his voice raw the way it was when he told you about his brother.

You smile at him. “You have me,” you say, catching a bit on some of the words.

He nods and grins. Grimaces. Something like that. You’ve forgotten the words to use. He pulls his arm back around you and hauls you, on and on and on.  
But now he doesn’t have his jacket, and you can feel him shivering as well, shaking gently beside you, and something in the back of your mind is screaming danger, screaming leave me behind, but neither of those thoughts seem very nice at all so you leave them there, screaming inside but silent outside. Besides, you don’t think he’d listen. You don’t want him to get upset. Instead of telling him, you keep your eyes on the red of his hood, right where it comes up to his jaw, to the bend of his jaw into his ear. You run your eyes along the slope of his nose, right where it becomes lips, and the little bend before that, and the sharpness of his chin, and the way the snow is catching in his eyebrows, and the way he squints his red, red eyes against the storm.

So you aren’t looking when his face lights up and he points at something in the snow.

“Cabin,” he gasps, and he begins to pull you faster. You pull your eyes away from him and forward, and there it is, right by the water, a wooden cabin. The two of you haul ass- well, haul as much ass as you can with a broken leg and hypothermia- toward the cabin’s dark silhouette, surrounded by swirling snow. When you get there, Dave tries the lock, and when that doesn’t work, he squares up and kicks at the door until it swings open, almost frantically.

Inside, it’s dark. There’s a rack of canoes along one wall, covered in tarp, and a shelf full of fishing supplies. Dave sets you down against the wall and begins to dig through every nook and cranny, searching for something, but when he’s made his way around the room, he sighs and pulls the dusty tarp off the top of the canoes.

“You need to take off your clothes,” he says. “They’re soaking wet. You can have mine.”

You only half hear him. It’s peaceful in the cabin, and quiet, and everything feels sort of muffled and lovely. You aren’t even cold anymore- you feel like you’ve slid into a hot bath, relaxed and warm and fuzzy. You give him a smile.

“No, John. Come on. I’m going to take off your wet clothes, okay?”

You mumble something incoherent about how it’s fine, and you’re already warm, and his face goes pale.

“No, John, you’re not warm, okay? That’s hypothermia. Come on.” He starts to pull off the jacket he gave you, then your jacket, then the sweatshirt underneath, and down and down until your chest is bare. He pulls off his sweatshirt and shirt and pulls them onto you. You barely feel it. He takes your pants next, careful not to jostle your leg too much, then says something to you before feeling the edges of your underwear. You guess he’s satisfied, because he leaves those on, pulling off his own jeans and pulling them onto your legs. They don’t quite fit- you giggle as he tries to pull them up over your thighs- but then he pulls the tarp over you and pushes you away from the wall.

“Hold that, okay?” he says softly. You don’t have the energy to nod, but you keep your grip on the tarp anyway. He holds you up and maneuvers himself so that he’s sitting against you, his chest pressed to your back, and pulls the tarp around himself, covering his back. Then he leans back against the wall and pulls you against him, his legs on either side of yours, his arms around your chest, your head resting on his shoulder.

“Dave,” you mumble.

“Don’t go to sleep,” he says. “We’re leaving as soon as the snow breaks.”

You glance up at him, and he’s just so incredibly pretty that you have to say it- “Wanna kiss you.”

“John, you’re delirious, okay? Just-”

“No,” you say. “No. I want- I just- For a while, okay? And…” 

It’s getting hard to concentrate on what you want to say, so instead you let yourself sink deeper into him, like you’ve sunk right into his chest, like he’s warm all around you, and to his credit, Dave doesn’t let go.

“Fine,” he says. “Okay. You can kiss me tomorrow, okay? But you have to stay awake until then. John? Come on. Stay awake.”

But inside his chest, his voice gets muffled, and everything goes dark.

* * *

You wake up to sunlight streaming through the cracks in the cabin’s roof, to the feeling of Dave’s chest gently rising and falling against yours, to his arms around you, and you can’t help but smile.

You risk trying to wiggle your toes, and it hurts just enough that it surprises you. Your breath catches, and instantly Dave is moving, talking, saying something to you. You turn around, and his face is full of worry.

“Jesus, John, just don’t move, okay? You broke your leg. You’re okay. You’re-”

And then you’re kissing his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his chin, every part of his face that you can reach, and his arms rest on your arms, on your neck, your hair, and you’re just so happy to be alive and to be with him that you can hardly contain it.

He pulls away after a moment and rests his forehead against yours, his eyes closed, his hands cupping your face, and then he pulls you in and kisses you and you think you might never be so happy again. His lips are dry and chapped, and when he opens his mouth his breath tastes kind of weird and gross and you don’t care, because here he is, Dave Strider, kissing you and holding you and happy to be with you.

It goes on like that for a little while, and then Dave complains that he’s cold and grabs your clothes from last night, which he hung on the canoe rack. He puts them on even though they’re still damp, which he complains about for at least ten minutes, and then he helps you get his jeans on the rest of the way from last night, and then he manages to make a splint out of the tarp- a soft splint, he calls it- and ties it with his scarf and a couple of other pieces of cloth that he rips from your tee shirt. 

When you’re set, he opens the door and steps out into the snow. He takes a look around, then glances back at you.

“I’m going to see if I can find the house,” he says. “I’ll bring you when I know what direction.”

“Is that safe, though? Shouldn’t I come with you?”

“Dude, you were barely walking last night. And you almost died. Rest.”

He returns within an hour with Jade in tow. The two of them lift you and literally carry you to the house, depositing you on the couch and covering you in blankets. Dave lets you change into sweatpants before he spends the afternoon making you a hard splint. Rose cooks stew. Jade sits with you and cracks jokes.

When Dave’s done with your splint, he sits on the couch and you lay with your head in his lap and just smile and smile and smile.

* * *

Spring comes again.

The four of you are in the garden, and when you rest for a moment to stretch out your bad leg, Dave comes over and kisses you on the forehead when he hands you a glass of water. He's wearing the shades you gave him this winter, the ones your father got you for your thirteenth birthday. You showed him the note of authenticity to prove they had been Ben Stiller's. He wears them every day.

“Happy birthday,” he says, running a hand through your hair.

You give him a big, dopey grin, and he shoves at you. “Get back to work, dork,” he says, hiding a smile.

You do.

**Author's Note:**

> What's this? I wrote another Homestuck fic? After I abandoned that first one years ago? You better believe it.
> 
> Title is from Hozier's "Wasteland, Baby!" because of course it is


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